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This is Later with Lee Matthews,
The Lee Matthews Podcast more what you Hear

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weekday Afternoons on the Drive. Chris
Moody is a writer based out of Chattanoogatuchu,

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Tennessee. His works appeared in The
Washington Post, Outside Magazine c and

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in Politics and many many more.
He's the host of a unique new podcast

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called Finding Matt Drudge. Chris Moody, I didn't know he was lost.

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It's great to be here. Yeah, he is somebody who was very prominent

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for many many years. Certainly when
he broke major stories, including the Montic

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Lwinsky Bill Clinton relationship scandal in the
late nineteen nineties, he was heavily exposed.

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He was a person on television,
had his own show, had his

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own radio show, was on Letterman. And then suddenly no one saw him

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again. He stopped appearing in public, he stopped having being photographed, he

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stopped doing interviews, and over the
last ten twelve years, people just haven't

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seen him. And so people wondered
what has happened to Matt Drudge? Is

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he still alive? Does he still
run his website? The answer to both

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is yes, but yeah, he's
a curious enigma, someone with great hour

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in media to this day, but
who we don't hear from. And so

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our podcast Finding Matt Drudge wanted to
understand him more, why he disappeared,

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and what he thinks about the current
state of politics and media. I can

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only imagine now. My exposure to
him was he was the go to guy.

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Everybody had him his website, the
Drudge Report, linked on their web

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on their computers, and you would
check it hourly to see if there was

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a headline and his little flashing red
light at the top of the page because

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if something we're breaking, he always
had it first before anybody else. And

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even when the left was accusing him
of no, that's not true, that's

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not true, it always turned out
to be an accurate story. It very

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often did. And I'll tell you
he was the assigned editor. Not just

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for conservative radio pundits or Fox News. This was media wide, conservative,

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middle of the road liberal. Everyone
was reading the Drudge Report. I spoke

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with members of the Hillary Clinton campaign
staff who said that they always had to

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be reading the Drudge Report all the
time because mainstream reporters would constantly be calling

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them and asking them about articles that
they had read on the Drudge Report.

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Now, they would never say it, they'd always say I heard this on

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the wire, but they really,
And so even on yeah right, even

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on the left, people were reading
him. Also, I spoke with Matt

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Drudge's editor who worked for him for
four years, named Joseph Kurl, and

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he said the primary website that people
went to after the Drudge Report was the

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liberal Huffington Post. So liberals were
passing through there all the time. And

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he would effect not just what was
read on the Rush Limbaugh Show later that

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day, but also what appeared on
ABCNBCCBS. He had immense power and that

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spread across political lines. Do you
think a lot of his success was due

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to rush Limbaugh because Rush Limbaugh quoted
him almost constantly. I certainly think it

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helped. But I think his success
was a fewfold. One was breaking news.

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He had scoops that no one else
had, you couldn't find anywhere else,

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and he wasn't afraid to release that
information quickly and efficiently. You could

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read it really quickly, you didn't
have to sit down for a ten thousand

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word article or anything like that.
But also he had such a great has

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such a great nose for new you
can go to that website and find a

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flurry of stories from sites you might
never read, and expose yourself to such

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fascinating things. Whereas today in the
current year, when we are reading the

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news, it's often dictated by an
algorithm through some tech company social media app.

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It's a robot, whereas the Drudge
Report is a living, breathing human

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being with fascinating, interesting, curious
tastes. And I think it's that level

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of taste that makes it continue to
be interesting, because we're living these algorithmic

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lives that are so flattened and boring
that even though the Drudge Report hasn't changed

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its design or font in twenty five
years, still remains intriguing because of that.

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Chris Moody, host of the podcast
Finding Matt Drudge Hurt on the iHeartRadio

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app and everywhere you get podcasts,
The man must never sleep. You know,

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he used to never sleep because he
was running that site largely on his

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own. Yeah, he was somebody
that spent hours and hours on his computer,

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and I think it took a toll
on his body. That's certainly what

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friends had said. And then in
the two thousands he started to hire staff.

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Andrew Breitbart was an editor of The
Drudge Report for a while, and

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a number of other people as well
that would take the load off, and

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they'd come in at seven o'clock in
the morning and they'd upload new links and

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then continue to refresh the site with
new content till about noon. Then Drudge

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would take over the afternoon shift or
some arrangement like that, and so he

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was able to get get help.
But he certainly continues to have his hand

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deeply in things, and he would
change things that he didn't like that the

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editor would do, but you know, largely remained hands off with those guys.

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But yeah, he's somebody who travels
around the world quite often. He

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likes to have people not know where
he is geographically, but he always keeps

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his eye on East Coast time USA
because he's on you know, American news

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time no matter where he is.
We know he likes to travel to Israel

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and is all over the US,
And so, yeah, he's he's a

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guy that's always online and has been
before we were online. He's somebody who

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had laptops that connected into the Internet
wherever he was in the world before any

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of us even had it in our
homes. So fascinating guy. Chris Moody.

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He's the host of the podcast Finding
Matt Drudge about Matt Drudge, And

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you keep mentioning editing, editing,
editing. That's one thing he really knew

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how to do, very very well. Where did he get his start?

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You know, it's not an orthodox
start. He grew up near Washington,

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d C. And the shadow of
the Great news titaned the Washington Post.

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But he was not really an academic
kind of student. He didn't have the

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academic pedigree that would lead him into
the elite newsrooms like the Washington Post.

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So he went out to California and
he became somebody that just managed the CBS

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store at the CBS studios. But
he got his start because he noticed in

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the garbage can that producer or people
in the news or in the TV industry

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were throwing away the ratings list before
they were made public, and he picked

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those out of the trash and published
them on his own and his website.

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His little website in the early mid
nineteen nineties was where you could find out

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where the Hollywood or the TV ratings
were first. And once he started scooping

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people, he started getting people giving
him sources giving him information and that led

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to him talking to a lot of
people in Washington. That led him to

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breaking news about the relationship between Monica
Lewinsky and Bill Clinton that really launched him

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and all of a sudden without going
through the mainstream news channels where he was

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shut out. Originally, he was
beating them at their own game, and

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he decided instead of joining them,
he would continue to beat them and has

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done so for twenty five years,
marching to the beat of his own drum.

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Chris Moody Finding Matt Drudge is the
name of the podcast. It's about

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Matt Drudge, the famous newsman and
a blogger, if you will. He

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was a blogger before bloggers were cool, that's for sure. And that's the

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other thing I wanted to ask you. You know, you read about and

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learned about Woodard and Bernstein in journalism
school, and how many sources they had

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and how many dark rooms and parking
garages they would meet these sources in.

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Did Matt Drudge have his own selection
of those? His dark parking garage was

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aol instant messenger that for many years
was where you could talk to Matt Drudge.

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You could send him links, you
could send him scoop and he would

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engage with you. He would speak
with you back. He was very involved

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in AOL chat rooms in the early
years, and then throughout the two thousands,

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continued on AOL insta messenger as far
as I know, all the way

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until it was shut down just a
couple of years ago. And he still

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has an AOL email address, which
is kind of a status symbol at this

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point to have such a legacy email
address. But that's that's where he got

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a lot of his scoops. But
he also would go to Washington and he

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would meet with sources in restaurants in
those big booths, and they would hand

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him packets of information. That's certainly
where he got the information about Monica Lewinsky

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was in person. So it was
a mix of digital but also that kind

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of cloak and dagger parking garage,
you know, dark shadow reporting, which

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any reporter in Washington that is broken
a story has done things like that,

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and that's how you have to get
information because there's lots of eyes and ears

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in that city and you've got to
protect your sources, and in many cases

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Matt Drudge did. He certainly did, and that you could see it on

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his Drudge Report, among his other
creations. Matt Drudge Finding Matt Drudge is

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the podcast heard on the iHeartRadio app
and everywhere you get podcasts. Chris Moody

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is the host, and Chris I
thank you for joining us today. It

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was great to be here, Thank
you for having me. Thanks for listening

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to Later with Lee Matthews, the
Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen

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to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from
five to seven and iHeartMedia presentation